REMEMBERING JOSEPH GOEBBELS

This past week we celebrated the seventy-third and one month anniversary of the death of Joseph Goebbels.  It seems like a dubious anniversary, but it is one worth marking.   You might think to yourself, why oh why are you bringing up someone who has been dead so long?

Too young to remember who Joseph Goebbels is?  Haven't read about the master of propaganda for the German Third Reich?  Oh, my friends, Goebbels was a master.

Let me introduce you---

"There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself."

"Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will."


Why are all these statements relevant?  Well, simply put, those that are so confident that nothing is really going on but a 'witch hunt' by Robert Mueller and the left, are supporters of Trump - an anti-science, anti-book-reading, one-network-television-watching President, one who eschews preparation and knowledge for off-the-cuff negotiations and mood-based decision making.  Those that claim the indictments made already by the Mueller investigation are evidence enough that this can't be an aimless task are generally into the opposite of all these things.

One would think that any anti-intellectual would become aware of the fact that in this new age of social media and instantaneous news, knowledge is power, and thus, whoever controls the information wields the power.

The reason to remember Joseph Goebbels is because every day these psychological tactics that he so masterfully articulated are put into play by the Trump Administration and his team (which includes Fox News).  We already know Sean Hannity is Michael Cohen's client and speaks to the President regularly, almost like an advisor.  Thus, nearly everything Hannity says comes with a caveat; he's essentially a spokesman for Trump himself. 

We know this because Hannity's name came out in the initial court proceedings against Michael Cohen months ago.  The fact that Hannity's attached to a news network is, in itself, troubling, since Hannity has already been proven to publish and state falsehoods, only to have to retract them later.  This, too, has been the case of Fox News.

Yet despite, these proofs of dubious reporting and manipulative techniques with agenda on full-display, it is the right who claims the left is manipulating the facts.  How is this so?

Perhaps no better run-down of the effectiveness of repeating lies and absolute garbage speculation was presented this week by John Oliver.

Humor aside, and it is funny, Oliver's repeated theme includes all of the themes above.  Fox isn't trying to appeal to thinkers that challenge their viewpoints, and thus, the more the lies are repeated, the more TRUTH is added to them for the voter who simply has come to ignore other media outlets.

Thus, remembering Goebbels each and every day now has become paramount for our country.  Remember, that a free press is the ONLY THING that is representative of a free country; that the moment the government and  network get in bed together is the precipice on which freedom and democracy stand primed to fall over the cliff.

I urge you watch John Oliver's reminder over and over and over until you're sick of it.  Then share it and watch it again.